


Certainty.

by sabrina



Category: Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Centerpoint Station, Gen, New Jedi Order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 09:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3377201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrina/pseuds/sabrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Centerpoint Station Anakin Solo searches for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Certainty.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this whole event sequence is pointed to throughout the rest of the series as a thing that mattered for Anakin, but it's hardly addressed in the book where it happens, and so this explores that perspective. Spoilers for _Jedi Eclipse_ obviously.

Ships. Stars. Beings.

Reaching out through the Force, Anakin Solo had seen them all. He had felt the connections between them and the trajectory of Centerpoint Station. He had been able to feel the connections between each of those places and the places where he could strike and cause damage to the enemy without taking innocent lives.

And he hadn't done it.

Coruscant never slept and Anakin hadn't either in the days since he and Jacen had returned from Centerpoint Station. His sleeplessness wasn't about the Holos or that his father's cousin was being lauded a hero. It was something more basic than that - the Force had shown him a solution. He had been able to see it all in the Force, in an instant of knowing he could fire Centerpoint, destroy enemy ships, and protect both the Corellian system, and the Hapan ships that had been sent to protect them. He had seen that solution, known as surely as he knew he could walk, that he could fire and save lives. He'd backed away from it and beings had paid the cost. It was the knowledge that kept him awake. And the question that hadn't left his mind: What was his role in this war? What was the Jedi's role in this war? It was a question he blamed his brother for making him ask.

A lightsaber in the hands of a trained Jedi could be used to defend more than one being. Practice of moves and the rush of the Force and that 5 second whisper of was coming next when he was fully stretched out and attuned and listening and it had saved his life and others lives multiple times over already. Every time he had fought the Yuuzhan Vong this had been the case. Anakin had never second guessed using his lightsaber - even to cut an opponent down. He had just listened to knowing where to strike, because he knew that if he hesitated, if he didn't listen, if he didn't use the weapon he would die - and others would have. Sometimes even when he tried, they did, but if he didn't - they most certainly would have.

He had argued Centerpoint as a lightsaber, it could be used for attack or defense depending upon who was wielding it. Nobody had argued with that, but he knew his brother had feared that by enabling it he would be allowing others to use it for attack. And it hadn't been Anakin's intention - precisely - but it seemed like that by enabling it, and then by hesitating to use it - he'd allowed someone else to pick up the pieces and rather than protecting it had caused harm. He had listened to his brother's doubts rather than the certainty of the Force and people had died.

He closed his eyes, posture straight as he dropped into a familiar stance to reach out. He wasn't looking for visions or overwhelming truths just those whispers his Aunt Mara had promised him existed and that had come as he had pulled back and started using the Force less and for things he could not do without it.

But that was partially it - his brother's doubts - but they were strong enough to make Anakin wonder if he ought not to have more of them at times. But he didn't, he truthfully didn't, and looking back on the event he couldn't believe that using the Force to reach out and fire Centerpoint, to harm the enemy but not the New Republic would have been a bad thing or even touching the Dark Side. It simply didn't seem wrong from every way he looked at it. He hadn't been drawing from the Dark Side for power, it hadn't been sourced from revenge or selfishness, but from a desire to protect the ships out there, and to protect the galaxy - and wasn't that at the heart of what Jedi were supposed to be doing in the Galaxy - war or no? The action might not have been perfect - Anakin was beginning to wonder if any action was truly perfect or if you could only strive for an ideal while hitting reality - but right now in this moment and in the many moments that had followed between Centerpoint Station and this moment Anakin could not help but feel it would have been the better course. Had his reluctance made things worse? Corellia was not so very far away from Coruscant. The New Republic lacked ships the Hapan Consortium had offered now and lives had been lost. By not acting, had he tipped the Galaxy further towards darkness?

Anakin quieted his mind and sought to silence the questions and instead listen. Through the Force Anakin could sense the people of the planet. Not individually so much, but the whispers and whir of lives being lived. That connection itself was a certain amount of solace. It was a connection he could not make with the Yuuzhan Vong which made them utterly incomprehensible. Without the Force, how could there be life? How could the Yuuzhan Vong exist so utterly outside of the Force? It led him to question whether or not there was not something about the Force that the Jedi hadn't found yet - and that was a more interesting question to him than this ethical quandary that Jacen seemed to have found himself mired in -- and willing to attempt to pull Anakin into as well.

Life mattered. The lives of each of these people mattered. Just as the lives of each of the people on each one of those ships had mattered. These were certainties that Anakin could not begin to deny or dispute. And as he stood, his senses extended to the mass of lives across the jewel of the galaxy, what he felt in the Force only increased that certainty.

Jacen was wrong. Not necessarily about everything, but it was wrong to sit back and do nothing, to fear so the Dark Side, that you sat and allowed lives to be extinguished when you could do something. Thoughtfulness was not wrong in and of itself, and perhaps Anakin could stand to practice a bit more of it, but without being backed by action, what was its value?

The night stretched out endlessly and Anakin stayed unmoving - a peculiar anomaly for him because he motion was such a certainty in his life - but tonight he was listening to whispers.

Whispers that told him the next time he could help someone - he should.


End file.
